I Never Saw the Moor
by Beringae
Summary: “They stayed like that for a small eternity. They breathed together, and Evey let it wash her away.” The night after Evey's release.


**I do not own anything concerned with V for Vendetta except three ticket stubs. **

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Shadows warped and twisted around the hard edges of the gallery like a perverse promise, a memory that jarred her irrevocably. It was a place aptly named, she thought, as she ran her fingertips over the dusty surfaces, the polished stone, the plush fabrics. Comfort weighed heavy in her mind because she had felt none of it for so long.

Evey Hammond could not sleep.

Time, she had realized during her period of un-slumber, shaped the human body into a wonderful thing. The bed, soft where cold and hard had been before, spread a dull ache through the joints of her hips and knees. Food made her retch. The scent of her own body, now flowery with foreign soap and she had hitherto been denied, caused the back of her throat to convulse unpleasantly. Rain made her weak.

And still there was nothing.

_I can't feel anything anymore!_

She thought maybe she should have felt hate, but even that emotion, so elemental and essential to human existence, evaded her. Relief, perhaps? Maybe she should have felt relief. Certainly not happiness or appreciation. Defiance?

She touched the cupboards in his kitchen briefly, and then the food within them. She was hungry, her stomach concave and wracked with spasms, but simultaneously she was not. She switched on the burners on his stove, watched the heat curl up from them in distorted clarity, held her hand over until she began to feel her skin blister. The pain registered on a vague level, and she thought clinically that she was causing it instead of someone else and that was good.

She watched her reflection in the alliterative mirror. Her lack of hair gave her a sharp, harsh appearance; the dark smudges beneath her eyes were like sickness. She was very thin.

She found him in a room she had never been before. She saw the mask first, white and cold on a table beside his immutable shape. He was in shadow, and she could see that his head was cradled in his hands only by the faint line of yellow light around his edges from the laboring illumination of the hall. He heard her before she spoke and reached for the mask.

"_Stop._" Her voice had no softness left in it.

His hands froze.

"I can't see you. It's dark," she said.

"Evey…"

"Shut up."

He fell silent. She walked toward him, stood over his seated form. She heard him breathing, a shallow trapped sound that elicited no response from her. Groping along the arm of the chair, she found his hand. The skin there was neither rough nor smooth. There were no fingernails, but the bones were thick and strong, the fingers long and dexterous.

He took in his breath quickly. "Evey, what are you—"

"I can't feel anything, V."

She knelt down to his level and searched vainly for eyes in the darkness. The temperature contrast of their skin was striking; she was terribly cold and his hand radiated warmth into her like panic.

She raised his hand and put it to her skin, where the thin column of her neck met shoulder, where the collar of her too-large shirt slipped down over the bony curve of clavicle and forearm. Heat seeped suddenly into her skin, down past muscle and bone. He made a surprised rumbling sound in his throat but didn't move.

Evey closed her eyes and guided the broad palm down so that it spread over her chest, just above the feeble swell of her breasts. Warmth loosened her chest, brought something other than nothing in.

They stayed like that for a small eternity. They breathed together, and Evey let it wash her away.

She opened dry eyes to see a glint in his. It lasted merely a second, a quick flash of dark irises in the non-existent light. She kissed the center of his palm, one last brush of warmth across her lips, and left.

Out in the hallway everything came rushing back to her, and finally she could cry.

-

AN: The title of this little story is taken from an Emily Dickenson poem with one word changed. Go read the poem and you might gain some new kind of insight into this. I may do one more chapter from V's POV.


End file.
